One of the oldest newspapers still published, it originally appeared as Zürcher Zeitung,[3] edited by the Swiss painter and poet Salomon Gessner, on 12 January 1780,[4][5] and was renamed as Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821.

According to Peter K. Buse and Jürgen C. Doerr many prestige German language newspapers followed its example because it set "standards through an objective, in-depth treatment of subject matter, eloquent commentary, an extensive section on entertainment, and one on advertising."[6]

Aside from the switch from its blackletter typeface in 1946, the newspaper has changed little since the 1930s. Only since 2005 has it added color pictures, much later than most mainstream papers. The emphasis is on international news, business, finance, and high culture. Features and lifestyle stories are kept to a minimum.

The circulation of Neue Zürcher Zeitung was 18,100 copies in 1910.[5] It rose to 47,500 copies in 1930 and 66,600 copies in 1950.[5]

In 1997, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung had a circulation of 162,330 copies.[9] Its circulation was 169,000 copies in 2000.[10] The circulation of the paper was 166,000 copies in 2003.[11] The 2006 circulation of the paper was 146,729 copies.[12] Its circulation was 139,732 copies in 2009.[13] In 2010 the paper had a circulation of 136,894 copies.[1]

In 2002, the newspaper launched a weekend edition, NZZ am Sonntag (NZZ on Sunday).[4] The weekend edition has its own editorial staff and contains more soft news and lifestyle issues than its weekday counterpart, as do most Swiss weekend newspapers. Its circulation was 121,204 copies in 2006.[12]

NZZ am Sonntag was awarded the European Newspaper of the Year in the category of weekly newspaper by the European Newspapers Congress in 2012.[14]

In 2005, the complete run of the newspaper's first 225 years was scanned from microfilm. A total of two million images comprising seventy terabytes, and its Blackletter type was scanned – using optical character recognition – at a total cost of €600,000 (or €0.30 per image). The result is a searchable digital archive, only publicly accessible on site.

NZZ Libro is the book publisher of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). Books have been published since 1927; since 1980, the publishing house has been run as a separate profit centre. Since 2006 the publishing house has been operating under the name NZZ Libro. The publishing programme of specialist and non-fiction literature includes, among other things, political, cultural, historical and economic books, as well as biographies and illustrated books, predominantly with a Swiss reference.[16]

^"Erasmus Prize". The Age (via Google News). 21 September 1979. Retrieved 23 August 2012. "The 1979 Erasmus Prize for outstanding contribution to European culture was presented jointly yesterday to the Swiss daily newspaper 'Neue Zuercher Zeitung' and the West German weekly 'Die Ziet'."